Friday, July 17, 2015

Reciprocal Gradient

Sorry I've been neglecting my blog... we've had a lot going on.The challenge on the REAL Nail Addicts group For the week of July 5th through the 11th was 'Reciprocal Gradient'. I've always like the look but had never done one, so it was time to try!

Reciprocal Gradient

Two of my favorite colors are silver and turquoise, so I decided to go with those colors... Sally Hanson's Xtreme Wear in 'Celeb City' and Finger Paints in 'Tails of Love'. You can't tell by looking at the bottle, but the turquoise has some glitter chunks in it... I didn't know this until I was sponging it on my nails! It made for a very textured finish that I wasn't fond of...

The first step was to paint my nails silver and make a gradient on the top of my nails with the turquoise... because in the finished manicure I wanted the turquoise on the tips of my nails.

Once the gradient was cured I put strips of striping tape on them...

Then you sponge the same gradient over the top, but in reverse...

When you remove the tape, there are stripes showing through of the other color! Pretty cool huh?

I will definitely be using this technique again, but with different, more high contrast colors and NO glitter chunks!